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Cable Lobby Steams Up Over FCC Set-Top Box Competition Plan (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Cable TV industry lobby groups expressed their displeasure with a Federal Communications Commission plan to bring competition to the set-top box market, which could help consumers watch TV on different devices and thus avoid paying cable box rental fees.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed new rules that would force pay-TV companies to give third parties access to TV content, letting hardware makers build better set-top boxes. Customers would be able to watch all the TV channels they're already paying cable companies for, but on a device that they don't have to rent from them. The rules could also bring TV to tablets and other devices without need for a rented set-top box. The system would essentially replace CableCard with a software-based equivalent.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed new rules that would force pay-TV companies to give third parties access to TV content, letting hardware makers build better set-top boxes. Customers would be able to watch all the TV channels they're already paying cable companies for, but on a device that they don't have to rent from them. The rules could also bring TV to tablets and other devices without need for a rented set-top box. The system would essentially replace CableCard with a software-based equivalent.
But the cablecos just made the Cablecards a pita to install (some requiring a technician to come out to your house to install a simple card), and making the slot so hard to implement that only a few companies like Tivo even tried to support them, then adding in shit like SJV to make them useless for certain channels, then charging RENTAL FEES for the cards. The rental fee was the ballsiest move of them all. And they got away with it too, of course, because lobbyists and campaign brib....contributions.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Do you have any idea how long it took and how much effort they expended to make sure that the Cable Card standard was never actually usable? And this new standard basically says they have to pass the data to an outside provider without being able to force the electronics retailer to have to go to cable labs which helped to make sure the process is painful and you can't win without giving in?
My god, people might not have to spend $20 a month on a DVR they don't own!
Reading through the FCC's summary, I can't tell whether this is a good or a bad thing. In principle it sounds good, but certainly there's going to be some sort of certifications involved somewhere, and I doubt open source stuff like mythtv is going to be able to pass the requirements to get certified. Cable card may be less than ideal in implementation as far as open source is concerned, but at least there, if you've got a cooperating cable provider, you can access much of that content in it's digital form, which is better than the previous options of analog capture.
So the question we need to ask is whether, from an open source perspective, this is actually going to improve things for us (I'm definitely skeptical on that), keep it about the same, or make it worse.
If they uses the IPTV approach, then they could just leverage devices people already have, such as the Apple TV, an Android TV based device or maybe a tablet.
Maybe this bitter medicine may actually help cable companies wake up and improve their service and the way people watch the content? There are people who still like the programmed content stream, but not necessarily the limitations on which device they can watch it on.
One company they should be copying: http://www.free.fr/adsl/freebo... (just use Google translate). It may be solution limited to France, but I am envious every time I read their offering.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.